
London
The Biography
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Narrated by:
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Nigel Patterson
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By:
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Peter Ackroyd
About this listen
London: The Biography is the pinnacle of Peter Ackroyd's brilliant obsession with the eponymous city. In this unusual and engaging work, Ackroyd brings the listener through time into the city whose institutions and idiosyncrasies have permeated much of his works of fiction and nonfiction.
Peter Ackroyd sees London as a living, breathing organism, with its own laws of growth and change. Reveling in the city's riches as well as its raucousness, the author traces thematically its growth from the time of the Druids to the beginning of the 21st century. Anecdotal, insightful, and wonderfully entertaining, London is animated by Ackroyd's concern for the close relationship between the present and the past, as well as by what he describes as the peculiar "echoic" quality of London, whereby its texture and history actively affect the lives and personalities of its citizens.
London confirms Ackroyd's status as what one critic has called "our age's greatest London imagination."
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Great Book
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Great history lesson on a city full of great and horendes stories of survival.
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Great book
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Great subject. Mediocre storytelling
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A fascinating journey
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I will never be uncomfortable in London.
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Fun & Fascinating
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The author doesn’t actually tell you about the history of London in an overview fashion or even connect dots from one period to another. Instead, he picks random anecdotes from that period in history and tells you about “a baker on a certain street” and a million such other examples of whatever they were doing on a particular day. And the book is literally just hundreds of these anecdotes strung together without any real purpose. I found this to be a frustrating and very inefficient way to learn anything. I rarely give up on a book once I’ve started it, but this is easily one of the worst books I’ve read in years.
Soooooo boring
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Splatter painting history
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Didn't Care For It
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